This application for a Special Research Award from the National Institute on Aging is a request for a grant to study autobiographical memory. The emphasis is on the study of autobiographical memory as a behavior. We are interested in (1) the response characteristics of remembering, e.g., time to respond, age of the memory, (2) the relation of these response characteristics to age, (3) the relation of the response characteristics to other cognitive and personality characteristics, and (4) the relation between response characteristics and stimulus characteristics, e.g., word type, complexity of cue, etc. This grant requests support for two related studies. The first study will examine the relationship between individual differences, variables (age, sex, imagery ability, and word fluency), stimulus (word) differences in rated imagery and meaningfulness, and performance in the autobiographical memory task. The two critical variables in the autobiographical memory task are response time and event age (time since occurrence). Four age groups ranging from 14 to late adulthood (60-75) will be included in this first study. The second study will investigate the response characteristics of autobiographical memories as a function of different types of stimuli. The stimuli will be sentences which vary in the level of information presented (1, 2, or 3 elements). By examining the responses to these stimuli in a life-span design we hope to clarify the processes involved in autobiographical memory.